WOLF'S NECK—CAPTURE.
The cupidity of his captors had been considerably stimulated by the dying words of Munro. They were all of them familiar with the atrocious murder which, putting a price upon his head, had driven Creighton, then a distinguished member of the bar in one of the more civilized portions of the state, from the pale and consideration of society; and their anxieties were now entirely addressed to the new object which the recital they had just heard had suggested to them. They had gathered from the narrative of the dying man some idea of the place in which they would most probably find the outlaw; and, though without a guide to the spot, and altogether ignorant of its localities, they determined—without reference to others, who might only subtract from their own share of the promised reward, without contributing much, if any, aid, which they might not easily dispense with—at once to attempt his capture. This was the joint understanding of the whole party, Ralph Colleton excepted.
In substance, the youth was now free. The evidence furnished by Munro only needed the recognition of the proper authorities to make him so; yet, until this had been effected, he remained in a sort of understood restraint, but without any actual limitations. Pledging himself that they should suffer nothing from the indulgence given him, he mounted the horse of Munro, whose body was cared for, and took his course back to the village; while, following the directions given them, the guard and jailer pursued their way to the Wolf's Neck in their search after Guy Rivers.
The outlaw had been deserted by nearly all his followers. The note of preparation and pursuit, sounded by the state authorities, had inspired the depredators with a degree of terror, which the near approximation of the guard, in strong numbers, to their most secluded places, had not a little tended to increase; and accordingly, at the period of which we now speak, the outlaw, deserted by all but one or two of the most daring of his followers—who were, however, careful enough of themselves to keep in no one place long, and cautiously to avoid their accustomed haunts—remained in his rock, in a state of gloomy despondency, not usually his characteristic. Had he been less stubborn, less ready to defy all chances and all persons, it is not improbable that Rivers would have taken counsel by their flight, and removed himself, for a time at least, from the scene of danger. But his native obstinacy, and that madness of heart which, as we are told, seizes first upon him whom God seeks to destroy, determined him, against the judgment of others, and in part against his own, to remain where he was; probably in the fallacious hope that the storm would pass over, as on so many previous occasions it had already done, and leave him again free to his old practices in the same region. A feeling of pride, which made him unwilling to take a suggestion of fear and flight from the course of others, had some share in this decision; and, if we add the vague hungering of his heart toward the lovely Edith, and possibly the influence of other pledges, and the imposing consideration of other duties, we shall not be greatly at a loss in understanding the injudicious indifference to the threatening dangers which appears to have distinguished the conduct of the otherwise politic and circumspect ruffian.
That night, after his return from the village, and the brief dialogue with Chub Williams, as we have already narrated it he retired to the deepest cell of his den, and, throwing himself into a seat, covering his face with his hands, he gave himself up to a meditation as true in its philosophy as it was humiliating throughout in its application to himself. Dillon, his lieutenant—if such a title may be permitted in such a place, and for such a person—came to him shortly after his arrival, and in brief terms, with a blunt readiness—which, coming directly to the point, did not offend the person to whom it was addressed—demanded to know what he meant to do with himself.
"We can't stay here any longer," said he; "the troops are gathering all round us. The country's alive with them, and in a few days we shouldn't be able to stir from the hollow of a tree without popping into the gripe of some of our hunters. In the Wolf's Neck they will surely seek us; for, though a very fine place for us while the country's thin, yet even its old owners, the wolves, would fly from it when the horn of the hunter rings through the wood. It won't be very long before they pierce to the very 'nation,' and then we should have but small chance of a long grace. Jack Ketch would make mighty small work of our necks, in his hurry to go to dinner."
"And what of all this—what is all this to me?" was the strange and rather phlegmatic response of the outlaw, who did not seem to take in the full meaning of his officer's speech, and whose mind, indeed, was at that moment wandering to far other considerations. Dillon seemed not a little surprised by this reply, and looked inquiringly into the face of the speaker, doubting for a moment his accustomed sanity. The stern look which his glance encountered directed its expression elsewhere, and, after a moment's pause, he replied—
"Why, captain, you can't have thought of what I've been saying, or you wouldn't speak as you do. I think it's a great deal to both you and me, what I've been telling you; and the sooner you come to think so too, the better. It's only yesterday afternoon that I narrowly missed being seen at the forks by two of the guard, well mounted, and with rifles. I had but the crook of the fork in my favor, and the hollow of the creek at the old ford where it's been washed away. They're all round us, and I don't think we're safe here another day. Indeed, I only come to see if you wouldn't be off with me, at once, into the 'nation.'"
"You are considerate, but must go alone. I have no apprehensions where I am, and shall not stir for the present. For yourself, you must determine as you think proper. I have no further hold on your service. I release you from the oath. Make the best of your way into the 'nation'—ay, go yet farther; and, hear me, Dillon, go where you are unknown—go where you can enter society; seek for the fireside, where you can have those who, in the dark hour, will have no wish to desert you. I have no claim now upon you, and the sooner you 'take the range' the better."
"And why not go along with me, captain? I hate to go alone, and hate to leave you where you are. I shan't think you out of danger while you stay here, and don't see any reason for you to do so."
"Perhaps not, Dillon; but there is reason, or I should not stay. We may not go together, even if I were to fly—our paths lie asunder. They may never more be one. Go you, therefore, and heed me not; and think of me no more. Make yourself a home in the Mississippi, or on the Red river, and get yourself a fireside and family of your own. These are the things that will keep your heart warm within you, cheering you in hours that are dark, like this."
"And why, captain," replied the lieutenant, much affected—"why should you not take the course which you advise for me? Why not, in the Arkansas, make yourself a home, and with a wife—"
"Silence, sir!—not a word of that! Why come you to chafe me here in my den? Am I to be haunted for ever with such as you, and with words like these?" and the brow of the outlaw blackened as he spoke, and his white teeth knit together, fiercely gnashing for an instant, while the foam worked its way through the occasional aperture between them. The ebullition of passion, however, lasted not long, and the outlaw himself, a moment after, seemed conscious of its injustice.
"I do you wrong, Dillon; but on this subject I will have no one speak. I can not be the man you would have me; I have been schooled otherwise. My mother has taught me a different lesson; her teachings have doomed me, and these enjoyments are now all beyond my hope."
"Your mother?" was the response of Dillon, in unaffected astonishment.
"Ay, man—my mother! Is there anything wonderful in that? She taught me the love of evil with her milk—she sang it in lullabies over my cradle—she gave it me in the playthings of my boyhood; her schoolings have made me the morbid, the fierce criminal, the wilful, vexing spirit, from whose association all the gentler virtues must always desire to fly. If, in the doom which may finish my life of doom, I have any one person to accuse of all, that person is—my mother!"
"Is this possible? Can it be true? It is strange—very strange!"
"It is not strange; we see it every day—in almost every family. She, did not tell me to lie, or to swindle, or to stab—no! oh, no! she would have told me that all these things were bad; but she taught me to perform them all. She roused my passions, and not my principles, into activity. She provoked the one, and suppressed the other. Did my father reprove my improprieties, she petted me, and denounced him. She crossed his better purposes, and defeated all his designs, until, at last, she made my passions too strong for my government, not less than hers; and left me, knowing the true, yet the victim of the false. Thus it was that, while my intellect, in its calmer hours, taught me that virtue is the only source of true felicity, my ungovernable passions set the otherwise sovereign reason at defiance, and trampled it under foot. Yes, in that last hour of eternal retribution, if called upon to denounce or to accuse, I can point but to one as the author of all—the weakly-fond, misjudging, misguiding woman who gave me birth!
"Within the last hour I have been thinking over all these things. I have been thinking how I had been cursed in childhood by one who surely loved me beyond all other things besides. I can remember how sedulously she encouraged and prompted my infant passions, uncontrolled by her authority and reason, and since utterly unrestrainable by my own. How she stimulated me to artifices, and set me the example herself, by frequently deceiving my father, and teaching me to disobey and deceive him! She told me not to lie; and she lied all day to him, on my account, and to screen me from his anger. She taught me the catechism, to say on Sunday, while during the week she schooled me in almost every possible form of ingenuity to violate all its precepts. She bribed me to do my duty, and hence my duty could only be done under the stimulating promise of a reward; and, without the reward, I went counter to the duty. She taught me that God was superior to all, and that he required obedience to certain laws; yet, as she hourly violated those laws herself in my behalf, I was taught to regard myself as far superior to him! Had she not done all this, I had not been here and thus: I had been what now I dare not think on. It is all her work. The greatest enemy my life has ever known has been my mother!"
"This is a horrible thought, captain; yet I can not but think it true."
"It is true! I have analyzed my own history, and the causes of my character and fortunes now, and I charge it all upon her. From one influence I have traced another, and another, until I have the sweeping amount of twenty years of crime and sorrow, and a life of hate, and probably a death of ignominy—all owing to the first ten years of my infant education, where the only teacher that I knew was the woman who gave me birth!—But this concerns not you. In my calm mood, Dillon, you have the fruit of my reason: to abide its dictate, I should fly with you; but I suffer from my mother's teachings even in this. My passions, my pride, my fierce hope—the creature of a maddening passion—will not let me fly; and I stay, though I stay alone, with a throat bare for the knife of the butcher, or the halter of the hangman. I will not fly!"
"And I will stay with you. I can dare something, too, captain; and you shall not say, when the worst comes to the worst, that Tom Dillon was the man to back out. I will not go either, and, whatever is the chance, you shall not be alone."
Rivers, for a moment, seemed touched by the devotion, of his follower, and was silent for a brief interval; but suddenly the expression of his eye was changed, and he spoke briefly and sternly:—
"You shall not stay with me, sir! What! am I so low as this, that I may not be permitted to be alone when I will? Will my subordinates fly in my face, and presume to disobey my commands? Go, Dillon—have I not said that you must fly—that I no longer need your services? Why linger, then, where you are no longer needed? I have that to perform which requires me to be alone, and I have no further time to spare you. Go—away!"
"Do you really speak in earnest, captain?" inquired the lieutenant, doubtingly, and with a look of much concern.
"Am I so fond of trifling, that my officer asks me such a question?" was the stern response.
"Then I am your officer still—you will go with me, or I shall remain."
"Neither, Dillon. The time is past for such an arrangement. You are discharged from my service, and from your oath. The club has no further existence. Go—be a happy, a better man, in another part of the world. You have some of the weaknesses of your better nature still in you. You had no mother to change them into scorn, and strife, and bitterness. Go—you may be a better man, and have something, therefore, for which to live. I have not—my heart can know no change. It is no longer under the guidance of reason. It is quite ungovernable now. There was a time when—but why prate of this?—it is too late to think of, and only maddens me the more. Besides, it makes not anything with you, and would detain you without a purpose. Linger no longer, Dillon—speed to the west, and, at some future day, perhaps you shall see me when you least expect, and perhaps least desire it."
The manner of the outlaw was firm and commanding, and Dillon no longer had any reason to doubt his desires, and no motive to disobey his wishes. The parting was brief, though the subordinate was truly affected. He would have lingered still, but Rivers waved him off with a farewell, whose emphasis was effectual, and, in a few moments, the latter sat once more alone.
His mood was that of one disappointed in all things, and, consequently, displeased and discontented with all things—querulously so. In addition to this temper, which was common to him, his spirit, at this time, labored under a heavy feeling of despondency, and its gloomy sullenness was perhaps something lighter to himself while Dillon remained with him. We have seen the manner in which he had hurried that personage off. He had scarcely been gone, however, when the inconsistent and variable temper of the outlaw found utterance in the following soliloquy:—
"Ay, thus it is—they all desert me; and this is human feeling. They all fly the darkness, and this is human courage. They love themselves only, or you only while you need no love; and this is human sympathy. I need all of these, yet I get none; and when I most need, and most desire, and most seek to obtain, I am the least provided. These are the fruits which I have sown, however; should I shrink to gather them?
"Yet, there is one—but one of all—whom no reproach of mine could drive away, or make indifferent to my fate. But I will see her no more. Strange madness! The creature, who, of all the world, most loves me, and is most deserving of my love, I banish from my soul as from my sight. And this is another fruit of my education—another curse that came with a mother—this wilful love of the perilous and the passionate—this scorn of the gentle and the soft—this fondness for the fierce contradiction—this indifference to the thing easily won—this thirst after the forbidden. Poor Ellen—so gentle, so resigned, and so fond of her destroyer; but I will not see her again. I must not; she must not stand in the way of my anxiety to conquer that pride which had ventured to hate or to despise me. I shall see Munro, and he shall lose no time in this matter. Yet, what can he be after—he should have been here before this; it now wants but little to the morning, and—ah! I have not slept. Shall I ever sleep again!"
Thus, striding to and fro in his apartment, the outlaw soliloquized at intervals. Throwing himself at length upon a rude couch that stood in the corner, he had disposed himself as it were for slumber, when the noise, as of a falling rock, attracted his attention, and without pausing, he cautiously took his way to the entrance, with a view to ascertain the cause. He was not easily surprised, and the knowledge of surrounding danger made him doubly observant, and more than ever watchful.
Let us now return to the party which had pursued the fugitives, and which, after the death of the landlord, had, as we have already narrated, adopting the design suggested by his dying words, immediately set forth in search of the notorious outlaw, eager for the reward put upon his head. Having already some general idea of the whereabouts of the fugitive, and the directions given by Munro having been of the most specific character, they found little difficulty, after a moderate ride of some four or five miles, in striking upon the path directly leading to the Wolf's Neck.
At this time, fortunately for their object, they were encountered suddenly by—our old acquaintance, Chub Williams, whom, but little before, we have seen separating from the individual in whose pursuit they were now engaged. The deformed quietly rode along with the party, but without seeming to recognise their existence—singing all the while a strange woodland melody of the time and region—probably the production of some village wit:—
"Her frock it was a yaller,
And she was mighty sprigh
And she bounced at many a feller
Who came a-fighting shy.
"Her eye was like a sarpent's eye.
Her cheek was like a flower,
But her tongue was like a pedler's clock,
'Twas a-striking every hour.
"And wasn't she the gal for me,
And wasn't she, I pray, sir,
And I'll be drot, if you say not,
We'll fight this very day, sir.
We'll fight this very day, sir."
Having delivered himself of this choice morsel of song, the half-witted fellow conceitedly challenged the attention of the group whom he had not hitherto been disposed to see.
"'Spose you reckon I don't see you, riding 'longside of me, and saying nothing, but listening to my song. I'm singing for my own self, and you oughtn't to listen—I didn't ax you, and I'd like to know what you're doing so nigh Chub's house."
"Why, where's your house, Chub?" asked one of the party.
"You ain't looking for it, is you? 'cause you can't think to find it a-looking down. I lives in the tree-top when weather's good like to-night, and when it ain't, I go into the hollow. I've a better house than Guy Rivers—he don't take the tree at all, no how."
"And where is his house, Chub?" was the common inquiry of all the party. The dwarf looked at them for a few moments without speech, then with a whisper and a gesture significant of caution, replied—
"If you're looking for Guy, 'tain't so easy to find him if he don't want to be found, and you must speak softly if you hunt him, whether or no. He's a dark man, that Guy Rivers—mother always said so—and he lives a long way under the ground."
"And can't you show us where, Chub? We will give you money for your service."
"Hain't you got 'tatoes? Chub's hungry—hain't eat nothing to-night. Guy Rivers has plenty to eat, but he cursed Chub's mother."
"Well, show us where he is, and we'll give you plenty to eat. Plenty of potatoes and corn," was the promise of the party.
"And build up Chub's house that the fire burnt? Chub lives in the tree now. Guy Rivers' man burnt Chub's house, 'cause he said Chub was sassy."
"Yes, my boy, we'll build up your house, and give you a plenty to go upon for a year. You shall have potatoes enough for your lifetime, if you will show us how to come upon Guy Rivers to-night. He is a bad fellow, as you say; and we won't let him trouble you any more, if you'll only show us where he is to be found."
"Well—I reckon I can," was the response, uttered in a confidential whisper, and much more readily given than was the wont of the speaker. "Chub and Guy talked together to-night, and Guy wanted Chub to go with him into his house in Wolf's Neck. But Chub don't love the wolf, and he don't love the Wolf's Neck, now that Miss Lucy's gone away from it. It's a mighty dark place, the Wolf's Neck, and Chub's afear'd in the dark places, where the moon and stars won't shine down."
"But you needn't be afraid now, little Chub. You're a good little fellow, and we'll keep with you and follow close, and there shall be no danger to you. We'll fight Guy Rivers for you, so that he can't hurt you any more."
"You'll fight Guy! You! Guy kin fight to kill!"
"Yes, but we'll kill him; only you show us where he is, so that we can catch him and tie him, and he'll never trouble Chub any more."
"What! you'll tie Guy? How I'd like to see anybody tie Guy! You kain't tie Guy. He'd break through the ropes, he would, if he on'y stretched out his arms."
"You'll see! only show us how to find him, and we'll tie him, and we'll build you a new house, and you shall have more potatoes and corn than you can shake a stick at, and we'll give you a great jug of whiskey into the bargain."
"Now will you! And a jug of whiskey too, and build a new house for Chub's mother—and the corn, and the 'tatoes."
"All! you shall have all we promise."
"Come! come! saftly! put your feet down saftly, for Guy's got great white owls that watch for him, and they hoot from the old tree when the horses are coming. Saftly! saftly!"
There is an idiocy that does not lack the vulgar faculty of mere shrewdness—that can calculate selfishly, and plan coolly—in short, can show itself cunning, whenever it has a motive. Find the motive for the insane and the idiotic, always, if you would see them exercise the full extent of their little remaining wits.
Chub Williams had a sagacity of this sort. His selfishness was appealed to, and all his faculties were on the alert. He gave directions for the progress of the party—after his own manner, it is true—but with sufficient promptness and intelligence to satisfy them that they might rely upon him. Having reached a certain lonely spot among the hills, contiguous to the crag, or series of crags, called the Wolf's Neck, Chub made the party all dismount, and hide their horses in a thicket into which they found it no easy matter to penetrate. This done, he led them out again, cautiously moving along under cover, but near the margin of the road. He stept as lightly himself as a squirrel, taking care, before throwing his weight upon his foot, to feel that there was no rotting branch or bough beneath, the breaking of which might occasion noise.
"Saftly! saftly!" he would say in a whisper, turning back to the party, when he found them treading hurriedly and heavily upon the brush. Sometimes, again, he ran ahead of all of them, and for a few moments would be lost to sight; but he usually returned, as quickly and quietly as he went, and would either lead them forward on the same route with confidence, or alter it according to his discoveries. He was literally feeling his way; the instincts and experience of the practised scout finding no sort of obstacle in the deficiency of his reasoning powers.
His processes did not argue any doubts of his course; only a choice of direction—such as would promise more ease and equal security. Some of his changes of movement, he tried to explain, in his own fashion, when he came back to guide them on other paths.
"Saftly back—saftly now, this way. Guy's in his dark house in the rock, but there's a many rooms, and 't mout be, we're a walking jest now, over his head. Then he mout hear, you see, and Guy's got ears like the great owl. He kin hear mighty far in the night, and see too; and you mustn't step into his holes. There's heap of holes in Guy's dark house. Saftly, now—and here away."
Briefly, the rocky avenues were numerous in the Wolf's Neck, and some of them ran near the surface. There were sinks upon the surface also, covered with brush and clay, into which the unthinking wayfarer might stumble, perhaps into the very cavern where the outlaw at that moment housed himself. The group around the idiot did not fail to comprehend the reasons for all his caution. They confided to his skill implicitly; having, of themselves, but small knowledge of the wild precincts into which they desired to penetrate.
Having, at length, brought them to points and places, which afforded them the command of the avenues to the rock, the next object of their guide was to ascertain where the outlaw was at that moment secreted. It was highly important to know where to enter—where to look—and not waste time in fruitless search of places in which a single man might have a dozen blind seekers at his mercy. The cunning of the idiot conceived this necessity himself.
His policy made each of the party hide himself out of sight, though in a position whence each might see.
All arranged as he desired, the urchin armed himself with a rock, not quite as large as his own head, but making a most respectable approach to it. This, with the aid of coat and kerchief he secured upon his back, between his shoulders; and thus laden, he yet, with the agility of the opossum, her young ones in her pouch, climbed up a tree which stood a little above that inner chamber which Guy Rivers had appropriated for himself, and where, on more occasions than one, our idiot had peeped in upon him. Perched in his tree securely, and shrouded from sight among its boughs, the urchin disengaged the rock from his shoulders, took it in both his hands, and carefully selecting its route, he pitched it, with all his might, out from the tree, and in such a direction, that, after it had fairly struck the earth, it continued a rolling course down the declivity of the rocks, making a heavy clatter all the way it went.
The ruse answered its purpose. The keen senses of the outlaw caught the sound. His vigilance, now doubly keen, awakened to its watch. We have seen, in previous pages, the effect that the rolling stone had upon the musing and vexed spirit of Guy Rivers, after the departure of Dillon. He came forth, as we have seen, to look about for the cause of alarm; and, as if satisfied that the disturbance was purely accidental, had retired once more to the recesses of his den.
Here, throwing himself upon his couch, he seemed disposed to sleep. Sleep, indeed! He himself denied that he ever slept. His followers were all agreed that when he did sleep, it was only with half his faculties shut up. One eye, they contended, was always open!
Chub Williams, and one of the hunters had seen the figure of the outlaw as he emerged from the cavern. The former instantly identified him. The other was too remote to distinguish anything but a slight human outline, which he could only determine to be such, as he beheld its movements. He was too far to assault, the light was too imperfect to suffer him to shoot with any reasonable certainty of success, and the half of the reward sought by his pursuers, depended upon the outlaw being taken alive!
But, there was no disappointment among the hunters. Allowing the outlaw sufficient time to return to his retreats, Chub Williams slipped down his tree—the rest of the party slowly emerged from their several places of watch, and drew together for consultation.
In this matter, the idiot could give them little help. He could, and did, describe, in some particulars, such of the interior as he had been enabled to see on former occasions, but beyond this he could do nothing; and he was resolute not to hazard himself entering the dominion of a personage, so fearful as Guy Rivers, in such companionship as would surely compel the wolf to turn at bay. Alone, his confidence in his own stealth and secresy, would encourage him to penetrate; but, now!—he only grinned at the suggestion of the hunters saying shrewdly: "No! thank you! I'll stay out here and keep Chub's company."
Accordingly, he remained without, closely gathered up into a lump, behind a tree, while the more determined Georgians penetrated with cautious pace into the dark avenue, known in the earlier days of the settlement as a retreat for the wolves when they infested that portion of the country, and hence distinguished by the appellation of the Wolf's Neck.
For some time they groped onward in great uncertainty as to their course; but a crevice in the wall, at one point, gave them a glimmer of the moonlight, which, falling obliquely upon the sides of the cavern, enabled them to discern the mouth of another gorge diverging from that in which they were. They entered, and followed this new route, until their farther progress was arrested by a solid wall which seemed to close them in, hollowly caved from all quarters, except the one narrow point from which they had entered it.
Here, then, they were at a stand; but, according to Chub's directions, there must be a mode of ingress to still another chamber from this; and they prepared to seek it in the only possible way; namely, by feeling along the wall for the opening which their eye had failed to detect. They had to do this on hands and knees, so low was the rock along the edges of the cavern.
The search was finally successful. One of the party found the wall to give beneath his hands. There was an aperture, a mere passage-way for wolf or bear, lying low in the wall, and only closed by a heavy curtain of woollen.
This was an important discovery. The opening led directly into the chamber of the outlaw. How easily it could be defended, the hunters perceived at a glance. The inmate of the cavern, if wakeful and courageous, standing above the gorge with a single hatchet, could brain every assailant on the first appearance of his head. How serious, then, the necessity of being able to know that the occupant of the chamber slept—that occupant being Guy Rivers. The pursuers well knew what they might expect at his hands, driven to his last fastness, with the spear of the hunter at his throat. Did he sleep, then—the man who never slept, according to the notion of his followers, or with one eye always open!
He did sleep, and never more soundly than now, when safety required that he should be most on the alert. But there is a limit to the endurance of the most iron natures, and the outlaw had overpassed his bounds of strength. He was exhausted by trying and prolonged excitements, and completely broken down by physical efforts which would have destroyed most other men outright. His subdued demeanor—his melancholy—were all due to this condition of absolute exhaustion. He slept, not a refreshing sleep, but one in which the excited spirit kept up its exercises, so as totally to neutralize what nature designed as compensation in his slumbers. His sleep was the drowse of incapacity, not the wholesome respite of elastic faculties. It was actual physical imbecility, rather than sleep; and, while the mere animal man, lay incapable, like a log, the diseased imagination was at work, conjuring up its spectres as wildly and as changingly, as the wizard of the magic-lanthorn evokes his monsters against the wall.
His limbs writhed while he slept. His tongue was busy in audible speech. He had no secrets, in that mysterious hour, from night, and silence, and his dreary rocks. His dreams told him of no other auditors.
The hunter, who had found and raised the curtain that separated his chamber from the gloomy gorges of the crag, paused, and motioned his comrades back, while he listened. At first there was nothing but a deep and painful breathing. The outlaw breathed with effort, and the sigh became a groan, and he writhed upon the bed of moss which formed his usual couch in the cavern. Had the spectator been able to see, the lamp suspended from a ring in the roof of the cavern, though burning very dimly, would have shown him the big-beaded drops of sweat that now started from the brows of the sleeper. But he could hear; and now a word, a name, falls from the outlaw's lips—it is followed by murmured imprecations. The feverish frame, tortured by the restless and guilt-goading spirit, writhed as he delivered the curses in broken accents. These, finally, grew into perfect sentences.
"Dying like a dog, in her sight! Ay, she shall see it! I will hiss in her ears as she gazes—'It is my work! this is my revenge!' Ha! ha! where her pride then?—her high birth and station?—wealth, family? Dust, shame, agony, and death!"
Such were the murmured accents of the sleeping man, when they were distinguishable by the hunter, who, crouching, beneath the curtain, listened to his sleeping speech. But all was not exultation. The change from the voice of triumph to that of woe was instantaneous; and the curse and the cry, as of one in mortal agony, pain or terror, followed the exulting speech.
The Georgian, now apprehensive that the outlaw would awaken, crept forward, and, still upon his hands and knees, was now fairly within the vaulted chamber. He was closely followed by one of his companions. Hitherto, they had proceeded with great caution, and with a stealth and silence that were almost perfect. But the third of the party to enter—who was Brooks, the jailer—more eager, or more unfortunate, less prudent certainly—not sufficiently stooping, as the other two had done, or rising too soon—contrived to strike with his head the pole which bore the curtain, and which, morticed in the sides of the cavern, ran completely across the awkward entrance. A ringing noise was the consequence, while Brooks himself was precipitated back into the passage, with a smart cut over his brows.
The noise was not great, but quite sufficient to dissipate the slumbers of the outlaw, whose sleep was never sound. With that decision and fierce courage which marked his character, he sprang to his feet in an instant, grasped the dirk which he always carried in his bosom, and leaped forward, like a tiger, in the direction of the narrow entrance. Familiar with all the sinuosities of his den, as well in daylight as in darkness, the chances might have favored him even with two powerful enemies within it. Certainly, had there been but one, he could have dealt with him, and kept out others. But the very precipitation of the jailer, while it occasioned the alarm, had the effect, in one particular, of neutralizing its evil consequences. The two who had already penetrated the apartment, had net yet risen from their knees—in the dim light of the lamp, they remained unseen—they were crouching, indeed, directly under the lamp, the rays of which lighted dimly the extremes, rather than the centre of the cell. They lay in the way of the outlaw, as he sprang, and, as he dashed forward from his couch toward the passage-way, his feet were caught by the Georgian who had first entered, and so great was the impetus of his first awakening effort, that he was precipitated with a severe fall over the second of the party; and, half stunned, yet still striking furiously, the dirk of Rivers found a bloodless sheath in the earthen floor of the cell. In a moment, the two were upon him, and by the mere weight of their bodies alone, they kept him down.
"Surrender, Guy! we're too much for you, old fellow!"
There was a short struggle. Meanwhile, Brooks, the jailer, joined the party.
"We're three on you, and there's more without."
The outlaw was fixed to the ground, beneath their united weight, as firmly as if the mountain itself was on him. As soon as he became conscious of the inutility of further struggle—and he could now move neither hand nor foot—he ceased all further effort; like a wise man economizing his strength for future occasions. Without difficulty the captors bound him fast, then dragged him through the narrow entrance, the long rocky gorges which they had traversed, until they all emerged into the serene light of heaven, at the entrance of the cavern.
Here the idiot boy encountered them, now coming forward boldly, and staring in the face of the captive with a confidence which he had never known before. He felt that his fangs were drawn; and his survey of the person his mother had taught him so to dread, was as curious as that which he would have taken of some foreign monster. As he continued this survey, Rivers, with a singular degree of calmness for such a time, and such circumstances, addressed him thus:—
"So, Chub, this is your work;—you have brought enemies to my home, boy! Why have you done this? What have I done to you, but good? I gave bread to your mother and yourself!"
"Psho! Chub is to have his own bread, his own corn, and 'taters, too, and a whole jug of whiskey."
"Ah! you have sold yourself for these, then, to my enemies. You are a bad fellow, Chub—a worse fellow than I thought you. As an idiot, I fancied you might be honest and grateful."
"You're bad yourself, Mr. Guy. You cursed Chub, and you cursed Chub's mother; and your man burnt down Chub's house, and you wanted to shoot Chub on the tree."
"But I didn't shoot, Chub; and I kept the men from shooting you when you ran away from the cave."
"You can't shoot now," answered the idiot, with an exulting chuckle; "and they'll keep you in the ropes, Mr. Guy; they've got you on your back, Mr. Guy; and I'm going to laugh at you all the way as you go. Ho! ho! ho! See if I don't laugh, till I scares away all your white owls from the roost."
The outlaw looked steadily in the face of the wretched urchin, with a curious interest, as he half murmured to himself:—
"And that I should fall a victim to such a thing as this! The only creature, perhaps, whom I spared or pitied—so wretched, yet so ungrateful. But there is an instinct in it. It is surely in consequence of a law of nature. He hates in proportion as he fears. Yet he has had nothing but protection from me, and kindness. Nothing! I spared him, when—but—" as if suddenly recollecting himself, and speaking aloud and with recovered dignity:—
"I am your prisoner, gentlemen. Do with me as you please."
"Hurrah!" cried the urchin, as he beheld the troopers lifting and securing the outlaw upon the horse, while one of the party leaped up behind him—one of his hands managing the bridle, and the other grasping firmly the rope which secured the captive; "hurrah! Guy's in the rope! Guy's in the rope!"
Thus cried the urchin, following close behind the party, upon his mountain-tacky. That cry, from such a quarter, more sensibly than anything besides, mocked the outlaw with the fullest sense of his present impotence. With a bitter feeling of humiliation, his head dropped upon his breast, and he seemed to lose all regard to his progress. Daylight found him safely locked up in the jail of Chestatee, the occupant of the very cell from which Colleton had escaped.
But no such prospect of escape was before him. He could command none of the sympathies that had worked for his rival. He had no friends left. Munro was slain, Dillon gone, and even the miserable idiot had turned his fangs upon the hand that fed him. Warned, too, by the easy escape of Colleton, Brooks attended no more whiskey-parties, nor took his brother-in-law Tongs again into his friendly counsels. More—he doubly ironed his prisoner, whose wiles and resources he had more reason to fear than those which his former captive could command. To cut off more fully every hope which the outlaw might entertain of escape from his bonds and durance, a detachment of the Georgia guard, marching into the village that very day, was put in requisition, by the orders of the judge, for the better security of the prisoner, and of public order.